Marxism Today (1967)

From the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

On an occasion such as the centenary of the publication of Volume I of Marx's Capital it is appropriate to consider whether Marxism is more widely accepted today than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, but no simple answer can be given to that question.

Some parts of Marxist theory seem to have lost ground while others have gained; but to a large extent both developments have to be weighed against the extent to which acceptance has been based on less than full understanding.

In the most shallow aspect, the use of Marx as a name to inspire political movements, a notable change has taken place. At one time there were social democratic parties in European and other countries which described themselves as Marxist and do so no longer. But it is a change of little real significance. Nominal acceptance of Marxism by the leaders meant little to the majority of members. It did not determine their principles and policy, as was to be proved by their attitude to capitalist wars and, when they became governments by their disregard of Socialism and absorption in the sterile task of trying to administer capitalism. How little Marxism meant to these parties can be shown by comparing them with the British Labour Party. While they professed to be Marxist the British Party made no such claim: as a former secretary put it, the British party owed more to Methodism than to Marx. Yet as political parties and as governments their behaviour was identical.

While the social democratic parties have dropped their lip service to Marx this role has been taken by the communist parties but with just as little justification.

Certainly one aspect of Marxism, the Materialist Conception of History has made a large and increasing impact though many of those who have been influenced do not regard themselves as Marxists and some may indeed even be unaware of the source of the influence. Sir Isaiah Berlin, eminent Oxford Professor of Political and Social Theory and by no means an uncritical admirer of Marx acknowledged the debt in an interview published in the Observer (6.11.66).

. . . there are certain originally resisted truths which Marxism put on the map. For example, the notion that . . . classes exist and class consciousness exists and has a decisive effect on men — that, although violently exaggerated, is now something no rational man denies. The notion of reification, to use a technical term —the idea that human beings tend to regard institutions which they themselves have in the past created as something objective and inexorable, the product of objective laws, like the phenomenon of gravitation — whereas they can in fact be altered by sufficient concentration and direction of human will-power and energy, if necessary by revolution — is again something which is by now accepted by quite a large number of sane thinkers.

A non Marxist historian, the late Professor Hearnshaw claimed for Marx that he “created the beginnings of scientific outlook in social studies" and that “the aspirations towards human equality, perhaps the most significant feature of the modern mind, draws its chief nourishment from him".

When we turn to Marx’s writings on economics it is a different story. The attitude of the popular TV and newspaper commentator, Bernard Levin, is typical of most of the Press and of the academic world. He wrote:

Das Kapital is after all, a vast book of no more relevance to conditions in Britain today . . . than the controversial philosophy of Haeckel or Henri Bergson. All Marx's major prophecies have been conclusively proved wrong by events, and much of his theory has been entirely exploded for half a century, indeed, the central economic doctrine—his labour theory was shown to be based on a misconception almost in his own lifetime. (Daily Mail, 13.9.65).

Regrettably, as so often happens with Marx-critics, Levin did not explain why he holds the labour-theory to be erroneous, or what are the major prophecies disproved by events. (Could he perhaps be induced to use our columns to tell us more?) There is however, a sufficient, if not exactly good, reason why Marx's writings appear to the popular commentators, the economists and politicians to be irrelevant. Marx scientifically analysed the way in which capitalism works according to its own economic laws and he put the capitalist system in perspective in the evolution of society. He saw the future of mankind in the replacement of capitalism by Socialism. He did not and could not work within the false assumption that capitalism is eternal and that we must therefore seek daily expedients to lessen the chaos and correct the contradictions inherent in the capitalist order. It was therefore only to be expected that the economists and politicians in today's world should decide that Marx has nothing to offer of use to them.

Confident in their baseless belief that it only needed expertise and goodwill to get rid of all the “bad" features of capitalism they did not want to read Marx and learn there that they were wasting their efforts. But how does this prove Marx to be irrelevant or show his prophecies to be wrong?

Marx showed how capitalism functions through expansions and contractions of the market and production and why it needs unemployment They ridiculed the idea as old fashioned, and did they not have Keynes to show them how to achieve full employment? But just as the Labour Government in 1929-31 planned to reduce unemployment and ended with achieving a record level, so in 1967 after nearly three years in office, the Wilson government in July scored the highest summer unemployment (nearly 500,000) for any year since the war.

Marx showed too (the misconceived labour-theory, according to Levin) that the money commodity, gold, has value like any other commodities, and that an over-issue of inconvertible paper money will push up prices. This, too, they scoffed at, but events have proved Marx right.

Also on the Labour government's prize exhibit, the incomes policy, Marx had something to say a hundred years ago. In the early days the Labour Party had the simple belief that the cure for an oncoming crisis is to push up wages. Marx was familiar with this argument and pointed out that if it were true crises would never happen because as a fact, in a period of boom, wages invariably rise and rise faster than the increase in production of consumer goods. Standing their former belief on its head the Labour government now seeks to prevent crises by preventing wages from rising: if they had read Marx's analysis of the situation they would have known that this was equally pointless except from the standpoint of protecting profits.

So who has been proved wrong, Marx or his detractors?

In another field Marxism was under fire from two opposite quarters—from those who said Marx did not know about the growth of monopoly and from those who said that his observations on the trend towards concentration of industry and wealth were mistaken.

Both were wrong. Marx fully understood the anxiety of capitalists to protect themselves if they could, against competition by forming monopolies and it ill becomes Labour Party critics to venture into this because, in their lack of any comprehensive economic understanding, they started as a party committed to the doctrine of keeping capitalist units small and competitive, only to come now to an officially backed policy of encouraging mergers so that British capital can stand up to the big battalions in capitalism abroad.

Before leaving Marx and his prophecies perhaps Mr. Levin, particularly in the light of current developments in Russia would like to show that Marx was wrong in prophesying that it was impossible for that country, or any other, to leap into Socialism without going through the normal phases of capitalism

Edgar Hardcastle

Beware of Bernards (1977)

From the November 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Today nothing is heard of George Bernard Shaw as a political "thinker", though his plays are still performed. When he was alive, people of the New Statesman type sought copies of the plays to read the long prefaces in which he expounded his ideas. These were supposed to be "socialist"; Shaw was a publicist for the Fabian Society and an admirer of Russia.

One of the things he advocated was that people should take an examination before they were allowed to vote. In Everybody's Political What's What (1944) he wrote:

And until popular choice is constitutionally guided and limited, political ignorance and idolatry will produce not only Hitleresque dictatorships but stampedes led by liars or lunatics like Titus Oates and Lord George Gordon. The choice should therefore be limited to panels of persons who have passed such tests as we can devise of their wisdom, comprehension, knowledge and energy. For legislative purposes adult suffrage is out of the question, as only a small percentage of any population has either the requisite faculty or knowledge.

The journalist Bernard Levin has just revived Shaw's argument. In The Times of 18th October, under the heading "It's the fools, not the Don't Knows who scare the daylights out of me", he drew attention to an opinion poll which found "that 8 per cent o the presumably representative sample believe that the Conservative Party's present policy includes the introduction of a wealth tax, two per cent believe that the Tories propose to abolish the House of Lords, and four per cent believe that Mrs. Thatcher, if elected, intends to nationalize the banks". Estimating that the percentages cover about three million of the electorate, Levin concluded:

That, if I may say so, is too many fools for comfort. And it is the incidence of folly, thus revealed, which worries me. If there are three million people as stupid as that in the country, only think of the havoc they could cause . . . 

The flaw in this plausible-sounding harangue is the phrase "present policy". Levin says the notion that the Tory Party proposes the reforms named is "ridiculous" and indicates "a wall of ignorance so thick and high that trying to surmount or demolish it would be a waste of time". Oh, really? The Tories have been responsible for more nationalization than the Labour Party; there is no reason at all for supposing they would not nationalize the banks — or introduce some form of wealth tax — if it was in the interests of important sections of the capitalist class. The possibility Levin has evidently not considered is that many voters know this in broad terms, and don't think it worth while to pick carefully over exchangeable party policies whose implementation is going to make no difference to them. 

But what of Levin's own "present policy"? It is what Shaw talked about as an example of his "socialism" i.e. the utopia of a planned and rational capitalism. Shaw's Fabian argument was that an accumulation of reforms would build it; instead of having to establish this "socialism" we should be overtaken by it. Many of the proposals made in Everybody's Political What's What and Shaw's 1928 work The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism are now accepted by Conservatives as what they always were, modern capitalist practice. And Levin is in the curious position of putting forward an argument he would have denounced in 1944 because it came from the (so-called) socialist Bernard Shaw. Would he call worker's "fools" and "stupid" for being unable to distinguish between the two?

What both these pundits assert is that is is "dangerous" to have a part of the electorate who have not learned capitalist doctrines by heart. One answer is that state education under Tories and Labour alike has produced a large section of workers—recently estimated as 15 per cent of school leavers—who are not well enough equipped with literacy to study the party conference reports in The Times; and this belongs to the social system which Levin defends. But to whom or what is it dangerous? The value of the voting system to the capitalist class is that it gives them the explicit support of the working class. Workers are asked at intervals to choose a programme for running capitalism and stand by their choice for a period. If they are apathetic or erratic in doing that, it means that the nature of the support is not readily ascertainable. A compliant electorate is one which thinks it really does matter if Thatcher nationalizes the banks.

Socialists certainly do not recommend workers to be negligent towards political matters. First, they should reject the suggestion of Shaw and Levin, which in effect urges some workers to treat others as inferior. Second, they should cease to concern themselves with who runs capitalism, and see that the measures Levin is so anxious to have correctly identified—and all other programmes of reform—will not alter their own position. Third, they must understand the vote as the weapon for their emancipation. Shaw specified "wisdom, comprehension, knowledge and energy" as the conditions for its use. "Wisdom" is a value-judgement, the attribute of whoever agrees with the speaker. The other three are possessed in abundance by the working class. They need only to be allied with class-consciousness, and the "foolish", "stupid" electorate will demonstrate that it knows what it wants—Socialism.

Pat Deutz

Bernard Levin and the SPGB (1976)

From the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bernard Levin is a well known columnist, a public figure, and if he isn't well known it is not due to lack of effort on his part. A journalist who is under a regular commitment to produce a daily newspaper column, as distinct from reporting news, is a man under constant pressure — a man eternally looking for something to say. Consequently, it is quite impossible for Levin, or anyone else for that matter, to keep up the pace and deal with matters other than superficially. Those who have followed the literary efforts of Levin over the years will have no difficulty in accepting this fact.

Levin wrote a criticism of the SPGB in an article entitled Creda Quia Impossible (The Observer, 18th April 1976) — and here we must add dog Latin to his many other talents. The article patronized us and what he described as the "glorious nonsense" emanating from the SPGB. This attack on the Party gave the impression of an amused tolerance for a "sect" based on "eccentricity" (his words) and was made in a review of a book called The Monument — the story of the SPGB. Unfortunately for Levin, some of the facts and anecdotes contained in The Monument, despite its many merits, are a personal version and the Party does not accept any responsibility for its contents.

Levin says, quite correctly, that the SPGB "has remained absolutely unchanged in its beliefs from 1904 to the present day". However, the SPGB bases its propaganda on the world of today not the world of 1904, as any reader of the Socialist Standard and listener to the spoken word will appreciate. The Object and Principles of the Party were formulated by our founders in 1904, and these Principles laid down the frame of reference for a revolutionary Socialist party. They are not a catechism, nor are they out of date any more than the Newtonian principles or any other scientific principles. We can well understand the amazement of Mr. Levin and others that such a strange phenomenon as a political party with a clean-cut object and principles should actually exist.

He says our position is "Marx is right; the SPGB interpretation of Marx is right". We do not accept that Marx was always right, and we have in the past criticized Marx. Nevertheless, we agree with the main Marxist theories of Historical Materialism and his analysis of capitalism.

Finally the SPGB has never been opposed to, or supported, reforms. Levin is confusing the political action which is necessary to get reforms with the content of the reforms. Nobody could oppose the introduction of safety working measures, of which Levin accuses us, free heating for old age pensioners, or other reforms, and we have never done so. If workers wish to sell their votes for a few crumbs of social reform that is their privilege, and equally, it is our privilege and duty to show that there is an alternative. We want them to take political action that will remove the need for reforms.

We mention these few facts in the rather forlorn hope that Levin will correct his mistaken view of the Party. We would also bring to his notice that no member was expelled or disciplined for carrying a gas-mask, nor is it true that "every time there was a vote on an expulsion those who had voted against it were themselves forthwith expelled". Levin can satisfy himself on this score, as the weekly Minutes of the Executive Committee are intact from 1904 and photocopies are available.

What a world we live in, and what peculiar standards of value we have which set great store on writings like Levin's. He follows a long tradition of instant intellectuals who are bankrupt of ideas and, having little real knowledge in their own right, can provide amusement in the knowledge that this suffices for many of their readers.

Jim D'Arcy